Sisterhood
Here we are in the next millennium and women are struggled against a prejudice again, this time the inherent prejudice is sister against sister. Our sisters have bought into the masculine ideology that no longer respects and honors the divinity of women.
Some sisters have stiletto-heeled their way to stand above their male peers in high positions in government, business and society. We watch Hillary Clinton knife her way to the forefront and then use the very sisters she backstabbed as cheerleaders for “Woman As President”. I, for one, am grateful she is out of the race. She does not represent the dignified grace of womanhood, in the way of sacred and purity and innocence and nurturing and healing. Politics is one kind of power: spirituality is another. And this has nothing to do with religions. Religions and women are another matter, while political and have curtailed the spiritual empowerment that women can hold and put forth, if they live the ways they were taught in the beginning.
We were once taught that both sexes were equal “two wings of the bird of humanity,” a prophet once said. There were ancient celebrations for both gods and goddesses and now, as some sisters remember and listen to the call, are trying to restore the mother element to all things. We have gone from religions that have portrayed women as enemy and as they defamed womanhood, they were, beneath the rancor, able to hide what else was going on. One of the surest ways to obtain power is to translate Creator’s words to fit the political religious ploys that seem to work in our society.
It began a long time ago when male political figures, who were also religious figures, used their gifts of words and their physical prowess to dehumanize women. Women were relegated to second class citizenry. The women of biblical times were not educated and therefore their roles were diminished and carefully scripted in scripture. It seems our societies through the ages have always had something against the feminine and their ability to give birth. It was seen as power and it was totally gender-based. Now, there are men having babies, or trying to. There are men engaged in duplicating life in test tubes. They are desperate to have what they were not given. But, even with that, they will not ever have what women were given from first woman. The men have their gifts. The women have their gifts. Those gifts were to be used together to become even bigger and better gifts.
Once men had to preen and earn the right to mate with a woman. Now, the roles have reversed. (Think about how silly woman can be to woe men that are not the best, not the strongest, not the hardiest, not the best qualifier for reproduction. Pregnancy is seen by many as either an inconvenience or a mistake. The progeny is either a problem or a bother, and stuck in front of a television, a toy, or with babysitters so life can go on as conveniently as possible in today’s society.
I was no more or no less guilty of some than any others. It seems life made us need more time. It was too difficult to carry our babies on our backs or under our cloaks. And heaven knows, you had to promise not to get pregnant to get a job, never take a child to work, and never miss work because you had children. In some cases, children become commodities. The more children you get, the more perks you get. The less educated use it as income. And then we wonder why our children have become such hurting little souls, why our teenagers are so angry, why our young adults carry on as if there were no tomorrow. We speak of what residential schools have done to our native generations that followed. I see the same problems even in children of parents who were not taken away. What do they blame? Deadbeat dads are old hat. Now there are deadbeat moms. There is a world of hurt out there. And, now, we turn on each other like rabid dogs.
The women who once ruled the house, ruled their kitchen, want to gain precedence over their sisters in any way possible. The enemy is within. We no longer gather in loving familial groups for quilting bees, in service of each other, in compassion for each other. We wage war with ways to one-up each other. We relegate other sisters to roles that liken servants and serfdom. We say we want to live forever and in the end, we will be found to be strange mounds in deep graves.
The medical academia found ways to extend men’s virility. Now they are trying to balance that with drugs to sustain women’s sexuality. Not for procreation as sexuality was given as a gift from Creator, but to use sexuality as power and control. And we compete, hardily….forgive the pun. We seek our youth because we realize we have not planned for the future. We have no present because we a slugging around in our past issues or have avoided our present by focusing on how to get more and more and more for the future. The more that we have is a sickened society that runs in packs or isolates themselves in quiet desperation because they can no longer compete. (See elders and the Peaceful pill blog). Livelihood is too easy to get and lose now. Rather than green fields we are concerned about greenbacks. We can’t share because to share means someone might have more than we do then. In the end of it, we have become mad dogs chasing our tails and looking for easy prey.
How do we ever get back to balance? How do we find the divine balance and equality in this mess? Laura Kipnis , in her book, “That Female Thing” wrote that regardless of how feminist a woman may believe herself to be, she is always in a constant state of battle between being feminist and being feminine. Somehow we have to go from being obsessed with food and love and religion and exercise and medications and diets and all the things we are addicted to, all the things that replace what it is our soul really wants, and different stages of depression and the projects of such, and find that peaceful place.
I believe that we have to learn to love each other, my sisters and I. We need to gather in circles of every kind for the good of the world, and heaven and Mother Earth and Creator.
Somehow we have to be honorable women who respect themselves and their femininity… that great gift of purity and soulfulness of sacred sharing. When we ground ourselves back to the way it was when we were created, we have the opportunity to realign ourselves so our relationships with all things do not wobble so. We can share the medicine that women share. We can relearn how to be grace and gratitude. We can relearn how to truly honor and worship each other. It is a case of, ‘we-HAVE-to if we are to fulfill our role as the peacemakers and healers of Mother Earth. We are divine and we need to act like it.
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